


she'd be dead, too.

by vasnormandy



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 'major character death' more like six, Angst, Like lots of it, seriously nothing in this fic is nice, why did i do this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:07:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3883426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vasnormandy/pseuds/vasnormandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"you people have done enough to her." || as the world buckles under the rule of the so-called elder one, the champion of kirkwall finds her way into alexius's stronghold to save a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she'd be dead, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of this Tumblr post: http://iwarnedyouabouthosestairsbro.tumblr.com/post/111565385095/you-literally-cannot-tell-me-that-hawke-left

The sound of far-off battles is commonplace here.

It’s been happening every few weeks for the past months. Small revolts rise up, throw themselves at the walls of Redcliffe Castle, and are mercilessly put down. Varric doesn’t know this because the Elder One's Templars are kind enough to take the time to inform their prisoners of their numerous victories over the suffering masses. He knows because he can hear the battles in the distance, and they never last long, and no one has taken the castle yet. Since the day the Herald died, he has not seen a friendly face but for Sera’s, perpetually scrunched up in rage in the cell across from him, and Cassandra’s, expression slowly fading from revenge to resignation.

Every single day, he wonders if one of those fights outside the walls was the Inquisition, gathering their forces and storming the castle to end the Elder One’s tyrannical regime, to avenge their fallen Herald, to rescue their people kept within – only to be violently put down, one and all. Every time he hears the distant clamor of swords and shouts again, he wonders if this is the one. He’s sure the Seeker is wondering the same; she is rather transparent. Sera, he thinks, might be too busy thinking about the people involved in all of the other revolts, the ones who definitely were not Inquisition soldiers, the ones who were ordinary – and about all of the faces she’s going to fill with arrows.

The sound of battle is a frequent occurrence, yes, but this fight is different.

This fight is inside.

He can hear the usual clash in the distance – but over that, smaller battles, shouts of guards, the sounds of lyrium-corrupted Templars hitting the floor. And it’s getting closer. Cassandra has noticed it, too – she’s gotten to her feet and walked to the front of her cell, hands wrapped around the bars.

It doesn’t take too long before the noises are right outside their door. Varric can hear swords, someone casting spells, muffled battle cries, bodies falling – and then voices, too quiet to be made out – and then the door opens.

He sees the staff first, and then the familiar spiked shoulder armor, the breastplate – and then the dark curls, and then the red strike across the bridge of her nose.

“ – _Hawke?_ ”

She winces. “A little louder, Varric,” she suggests. “I don’t think the entire army upstairs heard you.”

He’s off his ass in half a second, hurrying to the front of his cell; she puts a hand through the bars and he takes it, squeezes it with the compounded desperation of a man starved for physical contact and one who has to reassure himself that what he’s seeing is real. Hawke, alive; Hawke, here; Hawke, meeting his eyes, her face slowly falling as she stares. “Shit,” she mumbles.

“That bad?” he asks, very nearly a joke.

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you,” she replies, “but you’ve got a kind of… weird reddish aura.” She gestures vaguely through the air to accentuate her point, and then shakes her head as she draws her hand back through the bars to pull a lock picking kit from her pocket. “This is your brain on red lyrium,” she mutters, and in spite of everything, he chuckles.

“You are the Champion of Kirkwall?” Cassandra is gripping her cell door like she’s going to wring the life from it, her eyes fixed on their rescuer.

“You know another Hawke?” she quips.

“Carver,” Varric supplies.

He knows the second after the sound leaves his mouth that he’s said the wrong thing. Her face darkens, and she focuses much too intently on selecting tools from the kit. “Yes, well,” she says, in that strained voice she gets when she’s trying very hard to keep light. “Another Hawke this dashingly handsome. And –”

“Shit,” Varric interrupts, a low mutter. “Hawke –”

“Carver’s dead,” she says bluntly. “Along with almost all the rest of the Wardens.”

“ _Hawke_ –”

“Later, Varric.” She looks up with a forced smile, far below her usual caliber. “My ever-growing collection of dead relatives is a conversation for when we’re not all in the middle of a darkspawn god’s Templar army.”

He’s amazed, now that he thinks of it, that it’s taken him this long to ask, caught up as he was in the joy of seeing his best fucking friend alive in the middle of this shit, but as she sifts through her lock picks, he demands, “Hawke, what are you doing here?”

She looks up again to meet his eyes, her brow creasing in confusion. “What? You didn’t think I was going to leave you here to rot?”

“I didn’t think you’d be suicidal enough to take on the whole damn army alone to –”

“I’m not alone.” She pulls out a pick, nods vaguely back toward the door she’d entered through. “Fenris is standing guard.”

He pushes down his relief – _Fenris is alive, too, Hawke and Fenris have both made it this far and the others could have, too, they’re not all dead, he’s not the last_. “Oh,” he says, “two of you against the Elder One instead of one. I feel so much better.”

“Varric, shut up,” she snaps, and he falls silent, if only out of surprise – there is not the barest note of humor in her voice, and everything in the way she stares him down is as heartfelt as he has ever seen from her. “I wouldn’t leave you here,” she says emphatically. “Ever.” She drops her eyes, occupies herself with tucking the rest of her lock picking kit away again. “I don’t have enough family left to afford to do that.”

He stares as she crouches in front of the lock, and the silence lasts until Sera breaks it.

“Hey,” she calls. “Cute and all, but you maybe want to hurry it up with the getting us out of here?”

“They’re with you?” Hawke questions, and it takes Varric a moment to realize she’s talking to him.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s Sera. And –”

“Cassandra Pentaghast,” Cassandra interrupts as the Champion’s gaze turns to her.

“Pentaghast,” Hawke repeats. “You’re the one the Nevarran resistance is making such a fuss over?”

“There’s a Nevarran resistance?” Cassandra asks, and when Varric turns to look at her, he realizes with a start that he recognizes her – and, with another start, that he barely had a moment ago. There’s a fire about her that he hadn’t even realized had gone out.

“There’s about seventeen different resistances,” Hawke replies, and the note of lofty humor returning to her voice is blessedly familiar. “None of which are enjoying much success. They wiped out the Orlesian dissenters about two days after they sent a polite refusal to acknowledge the Elder One’s divinity.”

“Who’s holding out?” Varric asks.

“Ironically,” she says, “Tevinter.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Perish the thought.” A grin. “You know as well as I do how dangerous pissed off mages can be. And pissed off slaves. Imagine a whole army of Anderses and Fenrises.”

“I don’t really want to,” he admits.

“You know, me neither.”

“What of the Inquisition?” Cassandra interjects, her voice ripe with urgency. “Does it remain?”

The apology is clear on Hawke’s face before it comes out of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Haven was one of the first places they hit. If anyone lives, they’re scattered to the winds.”

Across the hall, a very creative stream of swear words bursts forth from Sera’s mouth.

“Maker help us,” Cassandra murmurs.

“Look around,” Hawke replies. “I don’t think he’s in a helping mood.”

The door opens, and Fenris’s shadowy form crosses through it, blood-spattered sword in hand. “Hawke,” he calls.

“Mmm?”

“No reinforcements as of yet,” he reports. “But I doubt our luck will last. We should not linger.” His eyes turn to the cells, and he nods. “Varric.”

“Broody,” Varric replies.

“I’ll be quick.” Hawke gets up, jogging over to Fenris and pulling him in by the jaw to kiss him hard – a precaution, Varric suspects. Just in case. She pours every ounce of passion she has into the space of a few short seconds, and then she breaks the kiss, pressing her forehead to his. “Give a shout if you start getting killed,” she murmurs.

“I will.” He brushes a thumb across her cheek, leaving a bit of blood there, and then he leaves.

“Glad to see you two are alright,” Varric says – half jest, half genuine – as she returns to kneel before the cell door again.

“The end of the world does wonders for relationships,” she agrees, moving her face close to the lock and starting to work at it.

“He’s right, though. You got that under control?”

“Relax. I know what I’m doing. Isa taught me.”

He frowns. “I taught you.”

“Yeah, and then Isa taught me how to do it properly.” She looks up long enough to flash him a grin and then resumes her work.

He lets a long few moments pass before he asks, “Do you know where the others are?”

“Varric, do you want me to get this lock open?”

“Hawke.”

She breathes a sigh, bites her lip; she’s silent for long enough that he’s starting to think she won’t respond when finally she says, quiet as death, “They got Aveline.”

It’s like a punch to the gut. “No.”

She nods. “And Merrill.”

Okay, that’s more like a rusted dagger to the gut. “How?” he asks, and his voice is a hollow rasp.

“They were trying to help refugee mages escape Redcliffe Village,” she mumbles, eyes fastened on the lock rather than his face. “They’re… _on display_ at the front gate.”

The wave of grief and disgust that washes over him is enough that he has to hold tight to the bars to stay standing.

“I don’t know about Anders or Isabela,” she says, and then, “It’s all shit, Varric. So don’t get killed on the way out of here, okay?”

“That’s the plan.”

“I could’ve picked that lock by now,” Sera mutters.

“You want to come out here and give it a try?” Hawke demands.

“Yes!”

“Well – you can’t.” She glances over her shoulder a moment to stick her tongue out at the elf and then goes back to work. “I’ll get you next. These things are tricky, and I’ve never been very good at this.”

“And what if the bloody Red Templars show up before you get the shitting locks open?”

“Then you sit tight while Fenris and I hold them off,” she replies. “We can handle a couple of glowy dicks with swords.”

“Careful, Hawke,” Varric warns. “These guys aren’t like anything we fought.”

“You think they can beat me?” She shakes her head. “Better men have tried. Also bigger men. Much bigger.”

“Just be careful,” he insists. “You can’t…”

There’s a shout from outside, and it cuts him off; her head snaps up. “Company,” she mutters, rising to her feet and taking her staff from her back; the end of it blazes to life. She presses the tips of her free hand’s fingers to her lips and then reaches through the bars to take his hand and squeeze. “Be right back.”

She’s gone for too long, the fight sounds rage on for too long, but so long as he can hear her and Fenris shouting he knows they’re still alive. At last, they both stumble back through the door, and Fenris slams it shut and leans heavily against it. He’s in just slightly worse shape than she is, and as soon as the door is closed her hands are alight with blue as she begins to work healing magic over the bleeding cuts, knitting his skin back together. Years ago, Varric remembers, he used to flinch away when she did that. Now he only stands against the door, head tipped back, breathing hard. He winces as she moves over a larger gash on his arm, and she swears quietly, mumbles an apology. She heals him as best she can, hands over what looks like her entire stock of health potions; he holds her by the shoulders for a moment, says something Varric can’t hear with concern visible on his face, and she replies, shaking her head; he nods, kisses her forehead before heading back out the door.

It’s not until she comes back to his cell that Varric realizes just how many places Hawke is bleeding from, how much healing every one of Fenris’s wounds seems to have drained her. “Hawke,” he begins.

“Don’t start,” she says. “You’re worse than he is. I’m fine.”

“You look like shit.”

“You’re a wonderful friend.”

“You could’ve healed yourself a little.”

She shrugs. “He’s the front line. He needs it more than I do.”

It’s no good, really – she’s hopeless, stubborn and far too used to her tendency of surviving impossible odds. So he does not raise the many protests on his tongue as she kneels again before the lock, exhausted, and starts again.

She barely works for a minute before there are more shouts from outside.

Sera kicks a wall, shouts something about reinforcements al-fucking-ready, and Varric can see Cassandra coiling, like a predator before it strikes. Hawke, though, continues working, her movements as fast as she can make them.

“Hawke,” he warns.

“I’ve almost got it.”

“Hawke,” again, more urgently, “get out of here.”

“I’ve almost got it!” She shakes her head to herself, her face contorted in furious concentration. “Come on,” she murmurs. “Come on, Fenris, hold them off for just a minute.”

“Hawke, go!”

“Not without you.” Her voice does not rise to match his – it is resolute, steadfast, sure, and he is chilled by the thought that her determination, his friendship, could be the thing that finally kills her.

“Hawke,” he says, yet again, pleading now.

“I’m almost done,” she insists, and then the red Templars break down the door.

She’s on her feet in a second; in two, she’s uncapped a lyrium potion and thrown its contents down her throat, and she’s drawn her staff; in three, they are upon her. Even injured as she is, he watches her tear down five, ten, twenty of the monsters, carefully timed bursts of destructive magic to knock them off their feet and healing magic to keep her on hers. He hates it, he hates every second – he’s helpless, he’s unarmed in his cell, he can do nothing but watch and shout warnings and pound the bars of the cell with the heel of his hand as though it'll make any difference – but at last, the madness seems to end, and there she stands among the bodies, bloodied and panting but alive. She glances back at him, and he draws a breath. That is her, he thinks. That is the woman they call Champion.

And then the second wave hits.

This time, her magic is weaker; her spells pack less punch, and there are so many of them, and their blades are so sharp. She’s backed up against the cell, her body angled – absurd as it is – as though to protect him. And then she’s on the ground, and he thinks he might be shouting for her, for her to get up, but he isn’t sure. Her staff clatters against the floor, skitters far out of her reach.

There’s fury on her face and a blaze in her hand – she’s trying without the staff to channel her magic, he realizes, she’s still trying to fight – but it’s flickering. And amidst the horrid red lighting, Varric doesn’t even notice the lingering blue glow from the form dragged through the door until one of the Templars throws Fenris’s broken body to the ground beside Hawke, his eyes glassy and wide and staring without seeing. Even wounded, even weaponless, even trapped like a caged animal, she was struggling, but now she stills – and in the instant that follows, Varric watches every last bit of light drain from her eyes.

An instant, though, it only lasts for that singular instant, because that is when one of the Templars holding her down lifts his massive, mangled, lyrium-infused arm and brings it down on her head with a sickening _crunch_.

Blood roars in Varric’s ears as he stumbles backwards, entirely unable to keep his footing now. His back hits the wall of his cell and he slides to the floor, and across the hall, through the Templars, he can see Sera kicking the wall again – repeatedly, screaming out any number of vile swears – but all he can hear is the rushing blood and the pounding of his heart. The Templars pick up the two bodies and take them away, but a horrible mess of blood and brain matter remains on the floor where she’d been – liquid, trickling through the cobblestones, seeping underneath the bars of his cell.

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as what I was writing to procrastinate on that massive Dragon Age ASOIAF AU that I'm supposed to be working on and turned into an experiment in "how many beloved main characters can I kill before I start to hate myself." The answer, if you're interested, is two. Whoo.


End file.
